this may sound really stupid but if you form the noun stemwhat is attached to it further? it may be my imagination butafter looking at this book for 9 years if you know that ARC -AEhas the noun/consonant stem ARCA there is nothing to attachto the end of it. ARC -AE however is declined as follows:

ARCAARCAEARCAEARCAMARCA

what endings are attached to the noun stem and what are its usebesides classification?

I must say I don't really understand what you are saying, particularly when you say "noun/consonant stem".Arca would fully be declined asArca - ArcaeArcae - ArcaarumArcae - ArciisArcam - ArcaasArcaa - ArciisArca - ArcaeUsing doubled vowels for a long vowel. But you know that, so what is your question?

what is ARCA used for? i do not see any tenses being formed from itsuch as present or perfect past participle. the only thing i can findin the book im using is the fact that it helps you understand theway the word was formed

can ARCA (consonant stem) be used in somethign like a noun declension?

or is the word ARCA just a theory of how the word is formed. i dont seethe book saying 'take ARCA and add the letters +M' or anythign to indicateusage.

adrianus wrote:Yes, it is a theory of word formation, and sometimes confusing, I think. Yes, in language learning to know the word root serves principally (exclusively?) in word classification, as you say.

what you are saying is that there is no spoken linguistic use for the noun stem or formation. it is a matter of classyfying words?

The stem, is just a way of teaching non-native speakers how to form all the other forms. Arca has the stem "arc", but yes, arc means nothing in Latin. The only reason you ever think about arc is so that you can add a, ae etc. to it to form all of its different forms. It has no other purpose.

Because English is pretty analytical at the moment, we don't really have any examples of roots. The closest thing I can think of is "establ", to which we add "ish" and any multitude of other affixes. You could think of "go" as a root, to which we add the ending nothing, nothing, s, nothing, nothing, nothing to form the present tense, but as I say, English is pretty analytical so it doesn't really work.

Salve NicolausSure, you are right about the following //Sanè, recta sunt sequentia quae dicis

there is a difference in stem between ARCA- and ARC-

ARX [ARC-] and ARCA form their dative and accusative by receiving -I and -M at the end of the stem, so the result is ARCI /ARCAI [--> ARCAE] and ARCEM / ARCAM respectively.

but look hard at the explanation. Why expect someone to understand that the "E" in "ARCEM" doesn't belong to the stem, but the A in ARCAM does? Why expect someone to understand that ARCAE is really ARCAI? And, worst of all, how do you explain to someone that ARX is NOT, in fact, a straightforward CONSONANT STEM but a MIXED STEM noun. In other words, it could be a consonant stem that has become a bit like an i-stem, or an i-stem that has become like a consonant stem? Because it's ARCIUM in the genitive plural (as an i-stem) and IS or ES in the accusative plural (A&G, §§70-72). Understanding takes a backseat to memorization here, I believe. Although, it is true that stem labelling is a good and proper way of labelling word classes to memorize. So I'm not really disagreeing with you deep down, Nicolaus.

I think I agree with you: for practical reasons I teach pupils that ARX is a consonantal stem and ARCA an A-stem.In this way I hope they can decline the words correctly and differ between them when they meet them in texts.

I wanted to do a little research on your name in Latin, Nicolaus, before settling on the vocative. I thought it might be third declension, and Nícolaus". It made me wonder was "au" a diphthong because, if it were not, then the stress would fall on the "o" because you seldom get a long vowel ("a") before another vowel ("u"). Now I see that it's second declension and not third. So surely, then, either it has an irregular stress (falling on a short penult, which isn't completely impossible) or there is a long vowel before the "us", and it's "Nicoláus", and in the vocative "Nicoláe", which is interesting, I think, just as "Amadée" is an interesting vocative. Do you know anything about your Latin name?

In the first declension (A-stems), "a" is in 10 out of 12 forms.In third declension Consonant stems, the consonant is generally in 10 out of 12 forms unambiguously.In fourth declension (U-stems, ignoring the length), 10 out of 12 (with -ibus) 12 out of 12 (with -ubus).In fifth declension (E-stems, long "e"), 11 out of 12 (or 12 out of 12 if you cheat and include accusative singular -em).

In the second declension (O-stems), "o" is in 4 out of 12 forms generally, and only 3 out of 12 for "-um" nouns.In third declension pure I-stems, unambiguously (and that's a short i, remember) it is sometimes in 4 out of 12 (imber), 6 out of 12 (ignis and turris), 9 out of 12 (sedile, animal, calcar where abl. s. is unambiguous, if long),—not counting the long i of the dative singular because that applies also to consonant stems, or the long i of the ablative singular because you can as easily write "e" and the stem is a short "i", after all, except for neuters sedile, animal, calcar).

Thanks, Adriane. When you lay them down like that the number of exceptions for the final letter(s) of the stem becomes much more obvious. But those are easily explained by sound changes and the like. Who needs a generalization to have no exceptions? If one or even two letters are missing or altered, nevertheless most of the stem still shows up in the form of the word.

For instance, it is purely convention that we spell it "dominus" and not "dominos" in the nom.sg., and the statistics don't take that into account. In Archaic Latin a convention began whereby <o> in a final syllable came to mean /ō/ because there in a final syllable is no phonemic opposition between (short) /o/ and /u/. So, by this convention, one could now distinguish between the nom.sg. "dominus" and the acc.pl. "dominōs" in the o-stems. If you read Old Latin, you will see countless examples of nom.sg.s in -os.

Similarily, the lack of a stem vowel to the naked eye in the other forms is often easily explained by historical linguistics analogies, syncretisms, etc.

The weird thing is that the reconstructed ending for PIE is -os when it comes to noun and both Greek and Latin (but not any of the other Italic languages I believe) copied the -oi from the pronouns. I've always wondered if the developments are connected since I don't think anything similar took place in any of the other branches.

Is that not just a plausible suggestion (or a hypothesis) without direct proof? it is stated here, too, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Latin, but I don't see any actual evidence in Wordsworth, Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin, 1874, Chapter IX ( "The O and U declensions"), §9 ("Nominative plural", pp.55-58). He imagines an earlier ending, "-ois" or "-oes". I wonder was proof subsequently uncovered.

Interesting, thanks. I had always just assumed that it was found in the remains of Old Latin. According to Sihler, though, there is one example, where Festus quotes "poploe" = "populi", with the presumed original -oi having been classicized to -oe. You can see it as http://books.google.ca/books?id=reMAAAA ... &dq=poploe.

I was also wrong about this kind of plural being shared only by Greek and Latin. Sihler states Old Irish and the Baltic-Slavic languages also share the development.